Some Jaina Canonical Sutras c3.5

c3.5

This leads us straight to the question of Buddhism. Both systems arose in the same part of India; both show that each of them stood in some sort of opposition to the other; and they have in common a number of technical terms. The question of a common terminology, which Dr. Law points out, is extremely important, though it has been largely ignored by Buddhistic students. Yet if we have reason to believe that certain terms such as āsava and tathāgata (tahāgaya) were used in a technical sense before being adopted by the Buddhists, we must approach them in a quite different way than by merely analysing their literal sense. There is the further possibility that the borrowing was not always on one side, and that some light may be thrown on Jainism by the parallel study of Buddhist texts.